Search form

menu menu
  • Daily & Weekly newsletters
  • Buy & download The Bulletin
  • Comment on our articles

Stop your whining: Campaign asks us to quit complaining for 30 days

16:56 15/01/2018

Can you go 30 straight days without sweating the small stuff? That’s the challenge of Thirty Days Without Complaining, a campaign that challenges Belgian residents to think more positively and not complain about everything.

The campaign started on Monday. “My job at Solvay requires me to travel a lot, which has convinced me how good we have it in Belgium,” says Isabelle Gonnissen, who thought up the project together with job coach Green Van Hecke. “Despite all our social safety nets, holidays, pensions, etc, I noticed that people are constantly complaining about not being satisfied.”

Gonnissen, the director of Solvay chemical company’s Sales and Marketing division, previously launched the Facebook page and hashtag MyJobisTop to encourage people to seek tasks and work that are meaningful to them.

“Complaining in and of itself – but especially continuing to complain about the exact same things – doesn’t solve anything,” Gonnissen says. “With this playful campaign, we hope to increase people’s awareness around how much they complain and offer concrete exercises to help them complain less and start enjoying life more.”

The campaign website (in Dutch only) offers a daily suggestion for recognising and combatting useless complaining. Today visitors will find a “happiness barometer” through which they can measure their current level of contentment. That, says Gonnissen, will help people engage in the campaign – and spend the next 30 days complaint-free.

Written by Lisa Bradshaw